Sir Hubert Wilkins an Australian adventurer, photographer and WW1 Soldier.

On 1 May 1917 he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Force (Australian Flying Corps). By August he had been transferred to the general list and was at I Anzac Corps headquarters on the Western Front. Appointed official photographer in April 1918, he was tasked with providing 'an accurate and complete record of the fighting and other activities of the A.I.F.' as a counterpart to Captain J. F. Hurley's propaganda work. In June, Wilkins was awarded the Military Cross 'for bringing in some wounded men'. With Hurley's departure, he was promoted captain on 11 July and took charge of No.3 (Photographic) Sub-section of the Australian War Records unit. His routine was to visit the front line for part of each day that troops were engaged in combat and periodically to accompany infantry assaults. During the battle of the Hindenburg line, on 29 September he organized a group of American soldiers who had lost their officers in an enemy attack and directed operations until support arrived. Awarded a Bar to his M.C., he was also mentioned in dispatches. The A.I.F. published his edited Australian War Photographs: A Pictorial Record from November 1917 to the End of the War (London, 1918).

In January 1919, as photographer, Wilkins joined Charles Bean's mission to reconstruct Australia's part in the Gallipoli Peninsula campaign. He entered the England to Australia air race that year, but his aircraft, a Blackburn Kangaroo, experienced engine failure and crash-landed in Crete; he arrived in Australia by sea in July 1920 and his A.I.F. appointment terminated on 7 September. Engaging in further polar exploration, in 1920-21 he made his first visit to the Antarctic, accompanying J. L. Cope on his unsuccessful voyage to Graham Land. Wilkins next took part in Sir Ernest Shackleton's Quest expedition of 1921-22 on which he made ornithological observations.